Only slightly bent

A few days ago, a survey by Opinion Research Corporation and AOL revealed that people – at least in the US – are “addicted to e-mail”. Right. And how does this manifest itself? Apparently people spend an average of one hour a day reading/writing e-mail. They have multiple accounts. And, oh horror, they give out e-mail addresses as often as phone numbers! So now people like Juha-Matti at Tietoviikko are picking up the so-called “news” and acting all weird about it.

Could someone tell me what exactly is the problem here?

Spending an hour a day reading or writing e-mail isn’t that bad. It’s a form of communication. Nobody would’ve questioned you 20 years ago if you spent an average of one hour a day writing letters. Nobody questions you if you speak an hour a day on the phone. Why should e-mail be any different? It’s just another form of communication. And active, creative communication at that; you’re the one writing stuff! At the same time, hours and hours of passive communication (like watching TV) every day is considered perfectly normal.

I bet most people talk every day. Many people can talk for hours every day. Yet, we don’t consider that addiction or something that we should avoid or be worried about. But if spending an hour a day for e-mail is addiction, shouldn’t talking many times as long be an equal cause for concern?

Instead of spending a day every week with no e-mail (as proposed), let’s try to spend a day without talking.

Oh but that would be just silly, wouldn’t it?

Exactly. I rest my case. E-mail is just one form of communication and should be treated as such. One can get addicted in pretty much anything, and addiction should be treated. But as long as we spend four times as much time on passive communication than on e-mail, this hysteria over e-mail is completely out of proportions.

I’ve put up a new page, Charts, (accessible also from the top links) that’s going to get different statistics and graphs on different topics. For now, you can find availability statistics related to Finland’s real estate market.

As I somehow recently ended up visiting a couple new restaurants, here’s a short review on both.

The first was Vltava, a new Czech-style restaurant in downtown Helsinki. On early Wednesday evening, the place was surprisingly crowded and the four of us had to wait for about an hour to get a table. (They don’t take reservations.) Waiting was not as bad as it sounded as there was room in the comfortable second-floor bar and time went by relatively quickly aided by good Magners cider. Despite people around smoking, the air conditioning was more effective than average and we didn’t have to suffer from the smoke too much.

When we did get our table from the restaurant on the third floor, another reason for the long wait became apparent: compared to the area of the bars, the food-side was tiny! Only a dozen tables or so. Quite nice busy downtown views, however. What comes to the menu, the selection is quite limited but adequate. Some Czech features such as sausages, plenty of meat and sauerkraut were plentiful. I settled for grilled chicken at €13 with plenty of garlic in the form of sauce and potatoes – the portion wasn’t as big as I expected (as they specifically advertise hearty portions), but big enough. A very nice dish anyway with the most important thing – taste – right on the mark.

Overall it turned out to be quite a positive first impression. Nothing spectacular, but a good casual place with decent prices. Perhaps 3.5 out of 5 points.

The other place, Grande Grill, has been around for some years. Somehow I don’t recall ever making it there until this weekend with some friends – maybe because it’s right next to Santa Fe, which is always a safe choice for good food.

The drink selection here wasn’t anything spectacular; no specialties. For the main course, I went with Mixed Grill with couple different kinds of meat, grilled corn and other stuff. Overall I was satisfied but a little disappointed considering expectations (which were probably set along the lines of the neighbor, Santa Fe). The chicken was good, but then again, it takes talent to ruin a chicken The meat wasn’t anything special – not bad, but not great either. Also, the corn was not really too good – which was expected in Finland, but anyway.

The dessert, however, was another story. Hot chocolate-nut fudge brownie with vanilla ice cream. This was great, really mouthwatering stuff. Definately one of the best brownies I’ve eaten in Finland. There wasn’t quite enough ice cream, but a great dessert anyway.

I’ll give Grande Grill a 3 out of 5. The price-quality ratio for the main courses at Grande Grill was noticeably lower than in Vltava, but the brownie was really good.. I’ll probably go back just for that someday.

When you call someone, what are you trying to reach? Are you trying to reach a location or a person? I don’t know about you, but I’d be willing to bet most people are actually trying to reach the person they’re calling and are not really very interested in tracking someone down from multiple different locations. If I want to call say, John, and have the option of reaching either him or his answering machine at home, I most certainly do not want to reach the answering machine!

You would think that makes sense. It appears that Vonage CEO Jeffrey Citron does not think so. In a recent Engadget interview he mentions:

I want, as an individual user, a phone attached to a physical location.
…
When you own your own house, you don’t want the plumber calling you to schedule an appointment when you’re in the middle of this interview right now. You want that call to go to your house and a message left on your voice mail.

Now that’s just dumb. Could someone please explain to me why it’s more convenient for me to go home to pick up the hypothetical plumber’s message at my house and then call him back, only to find out that he’s gone for the day? And then repeat phone-tag competition the following day. (while living with the clogged sewer)

Hello?! Why can the plumber not leave a message to your answering machine attached to the cellphone subscription? Also, has Citron never heard that you have these things called profiles in cellphones that allow them to be silent when you don’t want them to ring?

Of course, his opinions make perfect sense considering the company’s strategy. I wonder which is affecting the other.

(Heck, how often do you need a plumber anyway? What a stupid example. Or poor plumbing.)

Nowadays, people in most countries have many different options of being connected. We’ve got the old-fashioned face-to-face contact, fixed and mobile phones and all the different forms of the Internet. How many ways do you communicate in every day? Chances are you’ll talk to someone F2F. And probably on the phone, too. You’re quite likely to send (quite) a few e-mails. Maybe write something in a blog. Possibly send some SMSs or instant messages.

Instant Messages. For IM to be useful in its current form, I’ve come to the conclusion that ones social circle needs to be quite small. The reason is this: if you have too many contacts, you don’t have any time to do anything else than hang around chatting with them. Sure, you can set your presence to “away” or “busy” or whatever, but then if you’re busy or offline for most of the day, the concept really loses a lot of its significance. Another problem is that typing is a really slow and “poor” communication method: slow in the sense that even if you’re a fast typer, it’s still slower than talking. Poor in the sense that you lose all the nuances of spoken words as well as behavioural clues like facial expressions. And no, smileys do not compensate enough

What we need for IM is enhanced presence and smart access control levels. At least.

Aaah, summer.

The temperature has climbed above +20C (my personal lower threshold of a good temperature) for three consecutive days now. The Finnish summer is perceived by many to be absolutely great. I’ve often wondered whether this is because a) it really is so great or if b) it just feels special when the rest of the year is so miserable. My personal inclination is to believe in the latter option — but that does not diminish the fact that summers feel good.

During the weekend, I also discovered that it actually is possible to burn oneself even when the UV-index is less than five! This somewhat pathetic revelation came to me after a full day spent outside. Of course, it tells more about the color of my skin after months of darkness than about the amount of UV out there. In any case, it feels liberating to not having to worry about wearing a coat, hat, scarves to stop your throat from freezing, gloves and all the other excess stuff. You can just slip on some shoes or sandals and walk outside without all that preparation. Maybe next time taking care to apply some sunscreen but the sweet coconut smell of it is actually very good. Plus it brings back a lot of great memories.

Let’s hope the saying “The Finnish summer is short but there’s not much snow” and the corollary “this year it happened on Monday” prove wrong and this time around the summer would last longer than the approximately four days we had last year. One annoying thing about the summer here is that you immediately feel quilty if you’re not outside when it’s a nice weather. It’s like it’s a sin to waste the precious, rare beautiful days by doing anything insde. So in Finland, a long streak of nice weather can lead to regrettable ramifications due to delinquency of some duties.

But now I gotta get out there to enjoy the sunshine while it lasts